Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Canadians confident in housing, but most not ready to buy

Survey
results suggest most Canadians feel now is a great time to buy a home, but not
for them personally.

Survey
results suggest most Canadians feel now is a great time to buy a home, but not
for them personally.

A poll
done for Royal Bank of Canada found 59 per cent of those asked said now is the
time to get into the housing market, as opposed to waiting until next year. That
was up four percentage points from when the same question was asked in a survey
a year earlier.

However,
73 per cent said they are unlikely to buy a home within the next two years, up
two points from the previous year.

"There's
a mix of opinions on the housing market as Canadians still feel confident about
real estate but are a little uncertain about where the market is heading and
when it makes sense to buy," Marcia Moffat, RBC's head of home equity
financing, said in a statement.

**When
it came to property values, Quebecers were the most confident homeowners in the
country, with 78 per saying they could withstand a potential downturn in house
prices, compared to 74 per cent nationally. Yet 57 per cent of Quebecers -
slightly below the national average - said now is a good time to get into the
housing marking.

Not
surprisingly, 69 per cent of Albertans said now was a good time to buy a home,
with commodities-fueled growth driving a housing boom in that province.

Nationally,
88 per cent considered housing a good investment - including nine out of 10
Ontarians, despite concerns of a condo bubble in Toronto - while 68 per cent
said the value of their homes had increased over the last two years. Just 47
per cent of Canadians said housing prices would be higher a year from now.**

The
survey was done with 2,006 adult Canadians in an online panel by Ipsos Reid
between Jan. 24 and 30. A random sample this size would have accurately
represented the population within two percentage points, 19 times out of 20,
RBC said.

Meanwhile,
real estate firm Royal LePage released a report Thursday saying housing prices
in Canada were up in the early part of this year after an "unusually
high" number of sales resulted in tight inventories. Record-low mortgage
rates at less than thee per cent, on five-year fixed plans, were part of reason
why activity was so high, Royal LePage said.

It said
the average price of a standard two-storey home in the first quarter was
$398,282, up five per cent from a year earlier. The average bungalow price was
up 4.4 per cent to $356,306, while the going rate for a condominium rose 2.2
per cent to $243,153.